Feminism and Religion

Seeding up at the Turning By Sara Wright

The forest is bursting with berries, blue lily beads are just one of a multitude of seeds…Astonishing pearl bells adorn mounds of shining wintergreen that shimmer across the forest floor. Soon those berries will blush, bead up, cry scarlet. Three leaved trillium wear peaked red caps. Deep orange bunchberry clusters surprise the unwary -who is expecting this bountiful feast on a woodland floor? Partridgeberry beads are lime green except for those from last year. Soon too these will be adorned in flaming berries that will last all winter… I’m waiting for the cucumber plants to show their colors. Lemon lime whirls catch the slightest breeze. Cattails, and milkweed pods are sending puffs of cotton on the wings of the slightest breeze. Bull frogs call from the rushes; fish intent on the next meal, break the surface of the beaver pond creating a ripple that spreads across the still waters circles upon circles widening into blue glass. Blue headed vireos, red eyed vireos and the hermit thrush sing from green bowers hidden from sight. Hemlock cones have dropped their black microscopic eyes under each parent carrying the knowledge that kin will look after their own. Acorns are dropping a bit too early; their caps still green, but some creature will have a feast, or the microbes will devour these seeds enriching the soil for next year’s sprouting.

Seeding up…. Thousands of years ago women began gathering forest bounty – always asking for permission they took only what they needed. That the forest will return the favor is a given – gratitude the exchange – Seed Saving is an ancient practice that women originally learned from dreams, animals, and the trees that were their neighbors. At that time all were kin….

This year I collect hemlock seeds, the beaked hazelnuts that edge the forest are ripening – almost ready to split…I rattle wild columbine spires releasing the seeds, collect salmon rose hips for a nourishing tea… scatter wild poppy seeds. I am still waiting for elderberry to grace the ditches with deep purple berries. The birds and I keep an eye on ripening clusters and share the bounty between us.

My cultivated garden takes care of itself these days…. Planting vegetables gives me no pleasure – too many years of work, giving to others – too much work that restricted my freedom to come and go. The forest floor is medicine now. Appreciation of every gift grieved or given never goes unnoticed…but it is the joy of watching each plant offer its prayer for the future that keeps me returning … home.

The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: What if Divine Feminine and Divine Masculine Are Not Oppositional Categories?

Moderator’s Note: The blog was originally posted May 18, 2015

A friend who is a spiritual teacher speaks often “bringing back the values associated with the Divine Feminine.” For her this has to do with helping women to understand the beauty of our bodies and the importance of ways of being such as giving and caring for others that have been associated with the undervalued so-called “feminine” side of the masculine-feminine polarity. Though she also speaks about the Goddess, I think she prefers the term “the Divine Feminine” because of the implication that men too have their “Divine Masculine.”

This friend has a wonderful husband who is a teacher in his own right and who often ends up spending a lot of his time among powerful women who enjoy talking about the Goddess. In these conversations he sometimes speaks of the need for men to “recover the Divine Masculine” if they are to become whole.

9 Ingredients for Building New Narratives by Eline Kieft

There have been a few intriguing posts recently on creating new narratives (by Carolyn Lee Boyd, whose ‘dollops of mud’ inspired the title of this post), and reinterpreting existing ones that are deeply embedded in the fabric of our cultures (such as Moses and Rambo by Janet Rudolph). I distinguish re-creating personal and collective narratives as two aspects of this fascinating task.

The first aspect addresses our capacity to rewrite our personal narrative. What story do we tell about our lives? One of my teachers, Ya’Acov Darling Khan, says ‘we humans are story tellers by nature, so we better tell a good one!’ This doesn’t mean ‘making up’ a story, embellishing the facts, or putting sugar over shit, but exploring our own hero/ine’s journey, overcoming obstacles with courage, seeking help from allies, daring to go into the darkness and emerging with new insights, and most of all, what I call the skill to ‘harvest the wisdom gifts’ of life’s experiences. I look forward to writing more about this another time.

SpiritualiTEA with Chasity Podcast, Episode 3 by Chasity Jones

An excerpt from SpiritualiTEA with Chasity Podcast Episode 3: Why are we afraid of Divination??? What is divination?

Divination is from Latin divinare “to foresee, to be inspired by a god”. (Goleman, David. The Varieties of the Meditative Experience. London: Rider, 1975.)

“DIVINATION IS A SACRAMENT!!” – Chastity S. Jones

This is beautiful to me because it reminds me of how when the prophets would begin to prophesy in the bible or even the explosive forward movement of the spread of the gospel- driven by the Holy Spirit, as well as those who documented the gospel are all described as being inspired by God.

The most popular form of divination right now is tarot cards but we will discuss how there are many other forms- including forms that are acceptable in the church RIGHT NOW.

There are many bible verses cursing those who divine but I want to reiterate that one bible verse cannot be a comprehensive ethic or set of ethics, especially when there are other verses that contradict that verse.

The Fall of Patriarchy: I Got Scammed by Caryn MacGrandle

I am a few months out of my second marriage. There will be no third. I know my task right now is to become self-sufficient.

Thanks to my second husband, I have valuable Project Management skills. He set up an S-Corporation when he was out of work in Illinois and handed it over to me when he found a salaried job. I gained needed self-confidence over the past eight years and figured out that I am good at Project Management.

Now I need to convince another company of that. Because I am not good at sales and no longer have my main client in my company and with my divorce, I need a steady income.

I thought I had found one.

I was reached out to by a supposedly Swiss company called HAND-Lease that leases and sells extremely large equipment from $25,000 up to $55 million. They had just established a Pennsylvania office and were now opening a Birmingham office. I was phone screened by a customer service employee who said if they were interested, the Human Resource department would reach out to me for a longer interview.

From Footbinding to Abortion and Beyond – This Has to Stop! by Janet Maika’i Rudolph

My husband, Marty, is a retired podiatrist. He worked in pockets of New York City that were poor and largely immigrant. When he first started his practice, he treated women from China whose feet had been bound. Despite being officially outlawed 1912, footbinding was still being practiced well into modern times. He saw these patients in the 1970s and 80s.

For those who don’t know what it is, young girls, as young as 3-5 would have the bones in their feet broken and then the feet bound with cloth strips. Every few years, the feet would be broken again until the desired result was created. To create that affect, the toes would be flattened against the bottom of the foot and arch would be so broken and damaged that the heel would curl back to the front of the foot. At each of the breakings the girl would need to learn to walk again. One can only imagine that pain of walking on foot bones that had been repeatedly broken. And here is an especially chilling part. The mothers would do it to their own daughters. I won’t go into further gruesome details because they can be easily looked up on the internet. It left the girls crippled for life.

Visions of the Great Mother by Mary Gelfand

During late summer a few years ago I had a vision. I know it was summer because it was hurricane season and there were several active storms in the Atlantic & Caribbean. Since I grew up in Florida and lived in New Orleans for many years, I have a lot of experience with hurricanes.

In this vision, I found myself seated at the side of the Great Mother Goddess looking down thru a portal at planet Earth. The Goddess looked at me and then turned back to the portal. She put a finger out and touched a place on the planet with a spark of light. Then She turned to me and said, “The energy must be discharged!” She repeated this multiple times and ultimately put her finger on planet Earth five times, each time touching a spot where a hurricane was active.

The energy must be discharged!

Three poems by Sara Wright

Spirits of the Forest

In Forest Presence

I listen,

leaves

and needles rustle

Voices

Hum inside

Hemlock bark

sounding

if only humans

would listen

Incantations

erupt beneath

the forest floor

wrapped

in a tapestry of threads

millions of miles

of white

cottony intentions

interevntions?

made manifest

by Raven and

Owl

The Legacy of Carol P. Christ: Who Is Jephthah’s Daughter? The Sacrifice of Women and Girls

Moderator’s Note: The was originally posted on January 20, 2014

Last week I reflected on Angela Yarber’s insightful essay and painting on Jephthah’s daughter. For those who did not read the earlier posts, the story of Jephthah’s daughter is found in the Hebrew Bible. Jephthah’s daughter was sacrificed by her father after he swore in the heat of battle that if his side won, he would sacrifice the first person he would see on returning home. Angela called us to reflect on who Jephthah’s daughter is in our time.

In my earlier midrash on the story, I invoked Daniel Cohen’s powerful retelling of the story of Iphigenia. Cohen concludes that Artemis told Agamemnon that his ships would sail only if he sacrificed his daughter not because she wanted him to do it—but because she hoped this challenge would induce him to realize that the costs of war outweigh any possible gain.

On Eikev: Whose Behavior Should We Emulate? by Ivy Helman

The Torah portion for 20 August is Eikev, or Deuteronomy 7:12-11:25. Eikev describes the importance of spirituality in one’s life and proscribes the actions of spiritually-attuned people. The portion returns time and again to whom one should be spiritually connected: the deity, a jealous, angry, and fierce warrior who freed the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. Yet, if we look closely at the language of Eikev, there is a disconnect between this warrior imagery, other language in Eikev about the divine, and how the spiritually-attuned should behave. It is as if there are two understandings of divine nature here, and they are at odds with one another. In spite of itself, the language of the parshah decidedly favors a more feminist understanding of the divine.

Let us begin by looking at what Eikev says about spirituality. Deuteronomy 8:3 asserts that one needs not just bread to live, but connection to the divine as well. In other words, humans have concrete material needs that are extremely important. However, there is also more to life than just the material.

But, to whom is one supposed to spiritually connect? It cannot be denied that there is a lot of language in Eikev that refers to the deity as a fierce warrior, quick to anger, whose principle act was freeing the Israelites from slavery. A typical example of this language can be found in verse 7:19. “The great trials that your eyes saw, the signs, the wonders, the mighty hand, and the outstretched arm with which the L-rd, your G-d, brought you out. So will the L-rd, Your G-d, do to all the peoples you fear.” The deity showed strength and power when rescuing the Isrealites from slavery and will not hestitate to bring low those who threaten them. The deity is also often depicted as jealous and vengeful and quick to anger at Israelite misbehavior (9:7-8, 18, and 22). It is even said in Eikev that the deity gave the Israelites the Land not because of their goodness but because of the wickedness of the Land’s inhabitants (9:4-5).

Yet, in Eikev, one can read other passages in which that fierceness is overshadowed, where instead the deity displays love, care, and concern, and blesses the Israelites. This model for the divine is considerably more feminist because, as I have explained in numerous other posts, it is definitively not based on a patriarchal model of anger, jealousy, or power-over others.* The main example of the juxtaposition between the angry, vengeful warrior deity and the loving, kind one is in Deuteronomy 8. The deity both punishes and provides. But, in the end, divine care and concern outweigh more warrior-like behavior (verses 3-4), because despite the tests and trials, the people had food, water, their health, and clothing.

There are other examples in Eikev that highlight the divine as care and acts of loving-kindness. In Deuteronomy 7:13-14, we read about the many blessings the divine will bestow on the Israelites including fertility of the people and of the land. People will not suffer disease in the land (7:15). The deity makes sure to bring the Israelites to a good land with water, hills and valleys for mining and fertile fields for raising animals and planting crops and various fruit trees; no one will go hungry (8:7-10).

Why does the deity do this? Because of love. The parshah’s second verse (7:13) says that the Israelites are blessed because of divine love for them. The deity operates out of love for the stranger as well (10:18). Love is also part of how the Israelites should behave. They should love the divine (10:12, 11:1 and 22). And, because they love the divine and the divine loves the stranger, they too should love the stranger (10:18-19).

This very much reminds me of the sentiments expressed in Leviticus. We are to be holy like the divine is holy (Lev. 11;44-45 and 19:2). Just sixteen verses later, we read “…Love your neighbour as yourself,” (19:18). However, in Eikev, there is a more immediate connection between who the divine is and how the Israelites should behave. As I have already mentioned above, one should love because the divine loves, do acts of loving-kindness because the divine does, shelter, clothe, feed, and so on. Operating out of an understanding of the divine as angry, vengeful, jealous warrior would produce very different behavior, would it not?

Spiritual connection and action go hand-in-hand. Be holy for I am holy. Love because I love. Be kind because I am. Take care of others as I have taken care of you. This is Eikev’s message, one I think we should heed.

Ivy Helman, Ph.D.: A feminist scholar and faculty member at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic where she teaches a variety of Jewish Studies, Feminist and Ecofeminist courses.

*A partial list of my past blog posts that critique the patriarchal model of divinity as a jealous, fierce, angry warrior: Balak; Vayikr; Sh’lach; and Ha’azinu.